Chicago 'free-for-all' for Jackson seat

11/24/12 1:50 PM EST

The scramble to win the Chicago-area seat left vacant by former Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is already under way.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the special election field could get very crowded, so local Democratic Party officials are trying to rally around a single candidate.

Given the short time frame for a special election, and the chance for politicians to make a run for Congress without jeopardizing any office they currently hold, name recognition and dollars are of the utmost importance in trying to secure victory among a potentially crowded Democratic primary field. The winner of that race is likely to win the general election as well.

"You've got so many candidates who say they're going to be running, it could be a free-for-all," Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios, chairman of the county's Democratic Party, said Friday. "We want to make sure we elect someone who works hard to represent everyone in Chicago, everyone in Cook County and everyone in the 2nd Congressional District."

To that end, the party will seek to slate a candidate for the primary election in the new Democrat-drawn congressional district that stretches from the South Side and south suburbs to include parts of Will County and all of Kankakee County. In the March primary that Jackson won, 89 percent of the votes cast by Democrats came from Chicago and suburban Cook County.

Among the names that have surfaced as possible successors: former Democratic Rep. Debbie Halvorson.

Halvorson lost her seat in 2010 and then lost a primary challenge to Jackson in March. As the Trib notes, Halvorson is the only white candidate among the potential contenders, raising concerns among some African American leaders that a splintered black vote could lead to the election of a white candidate in a majority minority seat.